Disabled Driver Rescued from Flaming El Camino

A vehicle fire trapped a wheelchair-bound driver this morning.

Just before 8 a.m., an off-duty, volunteer Grape Creek VFD firefighter witnessed a fire under the hood of a 1983 Chevrolet El Camino. The firefighter stopped at a stop sign at the intersection of Avenue L and South Harrison Street and the fire caught his eye. Jered Thomason, who serves Grape Creek VFD as an EMS technician said that he happened to be driving by and saw it.

“I could see flames coming out of the engine compartment—under the hood,” he said. Thomason's first action was to check on the driver. “I could see that he didn’t have use of his legs, so I pulled him out of the car.”

Jered then fetched a personal fire extinguisher that he keeps in his vehicle and doused the flames on the engine. A San Angelo police officer arrived as he was applying the fire extinguisher and she fetched a second extinguisher from her cruiser and helped. Engine 7 from the San Angelo Fire Department arrived shortly thereafter and finished extinguishing the fire.

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